> On 04/04/2007 06:00 PM, Alan Cox wrote:> >>> Given that people seem to agree that authorship information has no >>> place in the binary, that might actually be best.>>>> Authorship information is very useful in the binary, especially when you>> have to get lawyers involved in explaining things to people.> > Okay.> >>> So, MODULE_AUTHOR be gone?>>>> Not if I have anything to do with it. Putting maintainer in is not a>> bad idea but that assumes it gets maintained, the beauty of _AUTHOR>> is that it's generally right and stays that way or approximately so.> > Case in point; someone is working with me in private on a new "mitsumi" > legacy CD-ROM driver. He's authoring the actual driver and upto now I've > just been doing some peripheral module infrastructure work. Given that I > have the hardware to test the thing, I'll be the maintainer though.> > Adding myself as a MODULE_AUTHOR would be largely incorrect and adding > myself as the _only_ MODULE_AUTHOR would be so factually incorrect I > wouldn't, even if only from a credits point of view. Yet I do want to > make sure people contact me, and not the MODULE_AUTHOR (which will > happen no matter the MAINTAINERS file).> > Other cases-in-point; I've lately been rummaging through sound/isa a > bit. Nothing much copyrightable again but especially in those situations > where (some of the) original authors are no longer active, I do again > want people to contact me about them if needed. And all the "which one > of the three people listed here is maintaining this" is yet another.> > MODULE_AUTHOR may be approximately right but especially with old drivers > it also has little relation with who's maintaining the thing.> > If MODULE_AUTHOR stays, can I just have MODULE_MAINTAINER please? It > doesn't need to be added to drivers directly, it can just grow (and > being inside the code, I suppose it'll likely stay up to date better > than the MAINTAINERS file).